Defects - Law's Collections 12
by Harmonica Smile
Summary: Marco wasn't a serial monogamist. It's just that his partners kept dying. Whether from old age, accident or a final breath taken far too early. Just one of the perils of being immortal. One shot. Past Marco x Ace, Past Marco x Law Canonical Character Death. Canon Divergence. Marco-centric.


**AN:** A post-post-post Luffy as Pirate King, _Repossession_ world, reflecting on past Marco/Ace, past Marco/Law, past Marco. Can be read stand alone, I think.

* * *

 **Defects**

* * *

Marco pulled the chawan, the tea bowl, from the cabinet and the whisk from the jumbled kitchenette. He'd have knelt on the tatami, royal blue kimono lifting slightly as he whisked the matcha for his visitor, his guests, his lover — Izou's eagle eye supervising the process — in a past incarnation. Even as a pirate. Even aboard the Moby Dick. Such things kept them aware of terra firma while crossing the seas.

Times were faster. He'd grown wiser and lazier with each rebirth. Elitism was never really his thing. He wondered why the marines had bothered fighting him, knowing he'd known their fathers and their fathers' fathers. Guess it wasn't a concept you could easily get your head around unless you were immortal yourself, and each restoration was kind of fuzzy for him too.

He rose young each time. Grew up in the same basic era as his lovers in that whole youthful bubble of vulnerability, but as he aged he remembered parts of the past — appropriate to the mortal age he was and had been. Appropriate to the ages of the mortals he was with. He never found another phoenix to bed with, though he wasn't purely phoenix. Just a fruit eater. What a fruit to eat.

The tea bowl was one of two, two of six. He placed its mate on the table. Marco's shorts were drawn from the hamper, his crisp, white t-shirt slipped from a hanger, his feet soft on the floor. Law had been right. He appreciated the almost casual acceptance the Heart had of someone, _someones_ , having come before him, and of more _someones_ occupying Marco's heart once it was Law's time to go. Because he would go. Both of them knew. And he had.

This gruff-faced one reminded him of Zoro. Funny. Law had been stoic but had a tender, tactile side once trust was earned and safety offered; when no trapdoors or tripwires were set off.

Marco had never seen himself with someone so unruffled. Make no mistake. He'd never chosen anyone incapable. This one was a little container of confidence. Maybe he'd evolved beyond attracting the ripped and stripped like filings to a magnet.

The jokes and the camaraderie of the Moby Dick still warmed his heart. Later, Law's quips and quirks. Still, the lopsided mouth of the mulberry cup he held, and the touch of pink that tongued its interior, reflected the chipped tooth, chapped lips of his latest man. The foot of the bowl was a bit rough on the old wooden table, but Law and he had carved meat, vegetables, sticks — and sometimes almost each other — on something similar.

And if the way of the tea was not about the crinkle in the curve, he didn't know what was. It didn't pay to be precious.

Marco _wasn't_ a serial monogamist. It's just that his partners kept dying. Whether from old age, accident or a final breath taken far too early. Who would he share these bowls with in the future?

Law's anger had once been enough to destroy the world, but he hadn't wanted to return to that boy so dull and aflame with pain and hate. Touch something hot enough, quick enough, the sting of the burn isn't felt until the day after, but the damage simmers under the skin.

Law would've pulled every pin on every grenade he wore around his chest like a substitute pulse if the Family hadn't taken him in. The Donquixote crew members had been so big and tall and far away, even Baby 5 and Buffalo, that he might've succeeded. Maybe it would have been enough to take out the room, and to leave the pursuit of justice to those who dished it out the best and the harshest. After all, even with Doflamingo's backing, the harm he could inflict was nothing compared to the Navy's expertise in the area.

As such, Marco and Law's fights were cold and distant, or a twisted clothesline of stumbling words and actions, trying to pinpoint what was wrong and not. That they both wanted to try kept them together.

The kettle boiled and there was no Misery or Mercury yapping at the whistle, no Law kvetching at him to get it off the heat, no Izou with an iron pot somehow suspended over the irori sunken hearth in the middle of the Moby Dick, showing him the way of tea, of fire, of being.

He poured a little water into the cup of the man who'd soon knock on his door after a day of work fighting the courts for the masses of people still displaced after all this time, generations beyond the scope of the new pirate king era. Stoic and smart. He warmed the cup, tilting the water this way and that.

He emptied the liquid down the sink. If Izou had been there, he'd insist on using the special bowl for the purpose. Form — emptiness, emptiness — form. Marco _did_ have a neatly folded linen cloth, the kind that Izou urged him to tuck into the sleeves of his kimono on the ship. Tiny. It sat on a saucer on the table. He wiped the interior of the bowl with it.

He'd enjoyed watching Law towel his nodachi with nugui-gami, the paper used for that kind of blade. The Heart firing out a rat-ta-tat-tat of back and forth sass, head bent, light from the side window infusing tips of black, engaged in the task and all around him. You couldn't let your guard down with Kikoku, but had to remain aware of your environment.

Marco scooped the matcha from the tin with the bamboo spoon and upended it into the bowl, twice. Tapped the spoon, twice, shaking off excess. The quantity was measured by eye. Rested the spoon on the closed lid of the tea.

Maybe they'd been disrupted when Izou taught him about whisking, but Ace never complained. All the same, it was Law, breathing over his shoulder after bitching at him to turn off the kettle, who suggested bowls slightly larger, with smooth bellies that wouldn't strip the bamboo tendrils of the implement. Who placed a tattooed hand over his, and whisked the mixture in an M-shaped direction. Island linen and cropped trousers pressed against one another.

"M for Marco," he'd said, a growl woven through the focus needed to serve the bastard the perfect cup of tea. As if he cared. That was the beauty of Law. He'd drink from whatever was available, but fully appreciated it if whatever was available was the best. Best fit. He was ragged and worn and knew it. Best fit. He'd slept on a soba pillow because he enjoyed the buckwheat grains against the side of his face, though not as punishment.

Marco's mother, he'd had many, but the one he remembered the most, maybe the first, had forced him to kneel on grains of rice as childhood punishment. Law wasn't intentionally austere. There was relief in the buckwheat sewn into a pillow when you'd only had the edge of your arm, or a cold concrete floor to rest on.

Law usually didn't grouse about what was given to him. Particular with his food wants and needs, he understood when to sacrifice a whim to a necessity.

Ace had suggested sifting the powder to avoid lumps and Law credited it as a great idea. Law's mother, the Heart told him, had held her hand over his tiny fingers, un-inked at the time, very un-death-like, and shaped his whisking into a series of _Ms_ so that the tea he took to his sister in her hospital bed was smooth and delicious.

* * *

As the mixture blended, Marco increased the speed until a light froth covered the tea. He returned the whisk to its perch. His not so new man — he'd been seeing him for two years now — was not across from him, but Marco turned the bowl so the front faced his seat, and with two hands around the chawan, he pushed it to the opposite side of the table.

"Fake it 'til you make it," Izou had said in words far more refined. The geisha's version of practice makes perfect. Marco walked to that side of the table and sat down, picked up the bowl. The snuffling of one of the dogs, so long gone, pressed up against his thigh. Thatch drunkenly sprawled against him. If he'd been corporeal, he would have forced Marco from his seat. Matcha was a good antidote to a night of drinking, though the tea preparation while drunk took some concentration. But he'd had that ability, even when three sheets to the wind, to bring some decorum to their encroaching delirium tremens. Spilled matcha powder aside.

He drank the tea. Three sips. Superb. Returned to the other side of the table, chawan casually in hand. He'd serve his lawyer with this cup, and he'd drink from its slightly off-kilter mate. For now he wiped the bowl and replaced it on the shelf, and its twin.

* * *

Ace had been so easy. All fresh autumn grass drying against the clear blue skies. He was usually happy or not. But they were all orphans. Their position was tenuous, and all fought to hold on, but readily gave life away for anything greater. Begged others not to help them. Fought others who tried to help them. Wished to be left to their fate. Ace especially so. Self-determination was a privilege denied those born at the top and bottom of the World Government's social order.

The new guy had drunk from Law's cup, as Law knew he would, and also Ace's. But Law had never drunk from Ace's chawan. Two deaths in one lifetime, in one awakening. It wasn't meant to be like that. Law recognised the bowl without being told. He had no wish to inflame any spirit not yet burnt out, and that spirit would never burn out. He'd hoped Fire Fist was happy that Marco was happy with him.

Ace welcomed all in and pushed all away, and had an adorable outlook on how to do things right, cos' he'd done things not quite so right for so much of his younger life, and _that_ was a moment quickly taken away. He'd watched Makino sift and make tea once.

Marco pulled down Ace's tea bowl and its match and smiled, recalling Shanks' story of Ace braving snow, wearing shorts of course, to confront a yonkou's crew to thank him. To thank him for looking after his brother, Luffy. In the politest terms possible. And his wild claims of his intentions to take Pop's head. Marco's laugh was absorbed by the powder and clank and thud of ceramics and wood.

The Strawhats noted Ace's politeness too, and Law and he hadn't crossed paths, but the Heart had shared nights with Luffy, and with Marco, and other members of the Whitebeard crew, and knew, from what they told him, how hard it was to fight the opinions of others when they decided your life just wasn't worth it.

Sometimes Marco caught Law cradling the ceramics. Never with envy, but tracing the flaws the firing and glazing processes created and, Marco knew, choosing to love the smattering of childhood spots like kisses from the sun still scattered over parts of his skin, and the bullet holes mapping a constellation across his body. Those cracks, those pits, Law found them in the cups and bowls, happy accidents. And Law understood the man thanking others for their love. The freckle-faced boy. Luffy had told him. Strawhat finally got around to telling Ace's family too. Fool. Who could ever hate him?

Law worked out which pottery was for whom. Ace hadn't been so in tune, despite his haki, despite his skills. Too caught up in needing to prove himself, to protect others, and to let love in only at his weaker moments.

Izou had taught Marco the way of the tea, but there was other earthenware. How did the pottery accompany him from one rising to the next? It didn't necessarily, but when scouring market shelves for sake cups, tea cups, mugs for cold barley tea and coffee, ceramic vessels for beer — other designs rippling with other places, other people, and other eras pulled him in.

In his quarters on the Moby Dick he'd kept sake thimbles. The one who'd shared his bed before Ace — long before he or Marco had been born or reborn — was sharp with working the land and rising with bird song that chased the clouds from dawn. But she'd liked her grog, and Marco, after a hard day's work, before tumbling into bed at eight pm for the four am wake up, had enjoyed sharing it with her. He'd never chosen unwisely.

Shards of pottery from rice bowls he'd filled for the one he'd actually had a family with were always gathered on a scrap of cloth. He wished he could remember. From some time a long time before the Void Century. Why had these pieces sung out to him at an offbeat archaeological jumble sale? A faded dragon's tail on the edge of the rough clay. Phoenix feathers. A tiger's claw.

Law and he had both had places and areas of homage and honour in the house they'd shared. Law's in the tacky tea-towels he collected and hung to flip-off the conservatives who thought he was anything but, and as an expression of his heartfelt, hobby-text, affection for Cora's appalling taste.

But he was more class than crass, and there were cups he shared with the spirits of his lost ones that bore the revolutions of a potter's wheel, the thumbprints of the potter, as much as anything Marco owned did.

Ace's glance was superficial. He instincts were primed, but he didn't sense the history in this scatter-bag of possessions. Maybe he was too new to someone loving him to sense other kinds of affection. Too protective of his identity to discern the shape of others. Too unwilling to admit his worth to allow it in others.

Law, Luffy too when he visited, had hovered near Marco's collection. Luffy was easily distracted by the bison and dinosaurs and bats Sanji had cooked up on their grill at the time, but Law wasn't deterred. It was communion, not an intrusion.

* * *

Lammy liked a glossy glaze, a cup etched with a rabbit and the moon. After the fire, the shootings, the soldiers thundering over the bridge above, there had been shards. So many fragments. People's frying pans, and rice cookers and earthenware and cutlery all burnt and melted and broken. Law hadn't thought to pocket even a pebble of Flevance.

He wouldn't see the lifetimes Marco did. He wasn't sure whether he was grateful or not. His luck hadn't been too good this time around, and he really couldn't bear to live it again. But within this lifetime, the glassy edges of the grounding stones Luffy and Marco gifted him had kept him present more than once. He hadn't picked up the curios of the past, but his lovers had slipped them into his hand. When he rolled the agate or the basalt between his fingers, he thought of the glaze against his skin as he turned Lammy's bowl to the front. As sick as she was, she'd always put a finger to the rabbit's ears, just as she had when she was healthy, before raising the chawan to her mouth.

Ace's bowl. Law weighed it in his hand and it fit comfortably, as all good ceramics should, melding to his palm, his fingers and grip easily finding a hold. It wasn't red. He'd thought it would be. But white. The lip uneven like waves pluming the ocean, and in the centre of the tea bowl's exterior, in the area that faced the drinker, red beat like the earth's centre.

Luffy spoke of the vivre card and blood and magma and how there'd only been two colours, and one sound. The white of rage of shock, the red of anger of action. Shared nightmares. Too much to let go of eventually, though they tried. They both had tried.

But the cup wasn't violent. It was peaceful, as even the shards were, though the smooth and rough sides harboured loss. The red was a camellia tumbled from the tree. He hoped they'd enjoyed it, Marco and Ace. The matcha they'd drunk from these cups. The camellia brought colour to winter snow.

The fragments of pottery Marco kept nearby on a small fabric — dyed with rich indigo colours, a fuck you to the ancestors of the celestial dragons who wouldn't let the commoners use silk, even though they used the commoners to produce silk — were also comforting in the curved fingers of his palm when he held them. These relics of the past held their forebears in the present too. Not always in direct vision, but as part of the peripheral.

* * *

Marco placed Ace's bowl on the table, warmed the cup, tipped out the excess water. He scooped the matcha powder and poured the water. Whisked in a way that Ace found comforting, using Law's technique, Izou's instruction. Ace was impressed by the ceremony. He felt and judged from the heart but knew any guidance he received had been out of the ordinary from the start, and the tea ceremony, the tea ceremony on a pirate ship, was extraordinary.

But Marco had no airs or graces that whittled another into a prop for his own ego, so Ace rested on the tatami of the one room they had in the ship, apart from where the lower-ranked sailors bunked down, asleep almost immediately to the sounds of the whisk against the edges of the cup. He woke from his cat nap as the base hit the tray, sitting up in the kneeled seiza he'd got the hang of, happy to share Marco's effort, Izou's tutelage. Though truth be known, he preferred sweet drinks and hot chocolate.

Marco knew. Some nights they shared that too. Now, a few lifetimes removed from Ace and Law, he set the bowl opposite him, greeting Ace once more into his quarters. Ace had lived in Law's time so it hadn't been hard to explain the collection to Law. Even devil's fruit were something of a rarity nowadays. The artificial ones causing a shutdown of organs in the users nearing the fifteenth year of their use. The natural ones stopped regenerating, for unknown reasons, about fifty years after Luffy had gained power. Life was at times mundane, but peaceful.

It was a little hard to explain to the new guy the altar with the representations of not only past lovers and families, but symbols of their families too. But Marco never chose unwisely. He rolled with it. Mr Stoic had a choice of any of the bowls because he never sensed the stories within.

Marco sat in Ace's seat and lifted the bowl to his lips and took three sips and downed the matcha. He rose, walked with the bowl to the kettle, rinsed out the tea residue, wiped it with the linen cloth, and returned it to the shelf. And its mate.

* * *

Law. Such a mixture of propriety and not. A pragmatist to the end. He'd drink wine from tea cups so long as they were made of porcelain. Poured beer into the plastic cups they used to beat eggs but preferred glass of course. Enjoyed running a finger around the rim of a crystal flute to hear the cross-country railway track whine of isolation, but could drink champagne as easily from a chawan, from one of his anodised picnic tumblers. No wonder Izou so often had conniptions in his company.

Law could be particular, but only when all battles had been fought. It was weird, but Luffy seemed to understand, sometimes making a beeline straight for their cabinet and pulling out the two chawan, only to fill them with some fizzy drink, or something soft for him and wine for Law, and tossing Zoro the ceramic beer glass that frothed with the perfect pour. Even with one eye and that eye shut tight with sleep, Zoro never missed it. Or if he did, Law saved it from smashing to the floor with a quick shambles.

Law's favourite tea bowl, the one that had spoken to Marco, was patterned with rabbits and Ace-like silver grass and the yellow moon. He never objected when Marco pulled them out when the dignitaries visited. Garp and Sengoku and Aokiji all versed in the ways and hierarchies of tea. Despite its uneven edges and forced flaws, Marco had picked up a set from the supermarket. Not 100 beri cheap, but not more than 1000 beri expensive either.

And when Law made the tea, as he did on occasion, matcha, he used these two, unless it was an anniversary of passing. He whisked _Ms_ through the liquid until it had an easy froth, and brought it to Marco, as if the Whitebeard couldn't move, watching his reaction while drinking, as if hoping for an improvement in condition, a return to spirit.

It was always tasty, and never enough. The tea bowls were the favourites of Bepo, Carrot and Chopper. Sometimes to the side was a sweet that absorbed any bitterness.

Law's gift was a hand-formed coffee cup and its partner. Most mornings its warped form — enfolding black coffee — waited on the table as Law turned the pages of the paper; daring the day to begin. A side of milk for Marco's softer stomach, and a bowl of sugar for his sweet tooth, accompanied it.

* * *

Marco returned the rabbits. The new guy never picked them. After cleaning, he packed away the matcha and the spoon, left the kettle resting on the stove. Checked the drawer to see he had enough linen wipes, and placed the soiled one with towels and dishcloths to be washed.

He opened the glass cabinet and pulled out that misshapen coffee cup. He hadn't been able to get the exact same hobbled mess Law had originally selected. Like their dogs, and their time with one another, they cobbled hacksawed pieces of life together with some success. Marco'd only been able to find one ugly-as-fuck mug, but if fit his hand perfectly, as it had in the past.

Still. He reached back into the cabinet and took down a glass. The new guy liked long necks, so he had the fridge stocked with a few. Fingers curled around the mug's handle, glass in the same hand, bottle in the other, opener twisted between his pointer and index, he went out to the balcony. Most of his lives had some view of the sea or rolling pastures.

He popped the bottle top and tipped Law's mug, his mug, as if Law were holding it. "Straighten it now, if you want any head to speak of." It was a coffee mug. Marco levelled the cup, and patted the back of the chair as if it were Law's shoulder.

Often Marco's pour was like the ocean right up to the edge of sand. No froth, but plenty of beer. Not this time. Law, Ace, the farmer, the woman from before the void century, would have taken a sip and wiped the foam from their lips, either with the back of their hand or their tongue. Eyes locked. In an ideal world.

He sat and poured himself a drink into the glass, nowhere near as successful. More beer for him. _Cheers_ , he gestured to the seat opposite. Sipped his drink, and maybe he'd finish the other or tip it out if it had grown too flat and warm. Had attracted too many midges. He'd offer it to his man if he came early enough.

He waited for the knock on the door.

* * *

 **A/N:** Whether Marco really is immortal or not, we don't know, but it's an interesting concept. This idea is explored from a reflection Law had in Origami Mana (T rating) on the imperfections that both strengthen and weaken objects and relationships. If Lily Amazon pops into this story at any stage, I hope she likes it, and parts of it were kind of inspired by some conversations we had. It's especially for her. However, I hope you all enjoyed it. Thank you for reading.


End file.
